1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image management apparatus suitable for searching a desired image in a high speed from a large capacity storage medium storing a large volume of large capacity information such as an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Widely known as an image management apparatus is a digital video disk player (simply “DVD player” hereinafter) or digital camera with a built-in hard disk drive (simply “HDD” hereinafter).
An HDD applied in a DVD player or digital camera is a high cost performance and a large capacity as compared to a storage medium, constituted by a semiconductor device, such as an xD-picture card (“xD” is a registered trademark) and an SD memory card (“SD” is a registered trademark). Therefore, the HDD is an effective storage medium when tens of thousands of images are desired to be stored.
Particularly, digital cameras have been progressing to provide ever finer pixel images in recent years. Also, desires to photograph many images are present. This has prompted to progress in providing large capacity storage media, thus greatly benefiting the use of an HDD. For instance, if a digital camera becomes capable of storing a large number of images therein, it provides a benefit of eliminating a need to back up the images in a personal computer (PC), et cetera. Other benefit includes a view of images photographed previously just by carrying such a digital camera.
Incidentally, a patent document 1 (Laid-Open Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-244606), as an example of a technique related to the above described, notes a digital camera which records image data in a rewrite limited storage medium (i.e., a storage medium, et cetera, allowing only one time writing) and records its data management information in an embedded memory in the case of the rewrite limited storage medium being attached to a mounting part of the camera.